


let me in

by griffenly



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4451399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griffenly/pseuds/griffenly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone's been using Bellamy's WiFi, and he is determined to get to the bottom of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me in

Fact: the WiFi in the apartment complex Bellamy lives in is absolute, utter shit.

Within the first two days of him moving in, he purchases his own router, because he has his doctoral thesis he has to finish as soon as possible, and it’s nearly impossible to write an eloquent but factual novel-length essay about ancient Greece with no Internet. Like, he understands people _did_ do that before, but for fuck’s sake. It’s the twenty-first century. He doesn’t have time for this.

So, he buys his own router, sets it up and adds a password - because damn it if he’s going to spend the money to alleviate this shitty WiFi situation and have the entire complex mooching off of it. Octavia mocks him for it, claiming, “Bell, this is basically the 2015 version of an old man screaming ‘get off my lawn.’”

“Yeah, well,” he mutters as he tests the connection, “I don’t want them on my fucking lawn. My lawn is beautiful.”

She laughs at him and steals another package of his Ramen, as if she doesn’t already have fifteen boxes at home.

(They’re very established in adulthood, _clearly_.)

The joys of wonderful, working, _fast_ WiFi last about two weeks before the connection starts getting slower, and slower, and slower - until, eventually, it won’t even let him connect half the time. It drives him fucking _crazy_.

He brings it up to Octavia about three weeks after it first starts. He’s standing in the kitchen, stirring the spaghetti noodles and watching the sauce and meatballs, and she’s perched on a stool by the bar, twirling her finger around the rim of her beer. “It just _won’t_ _work_ ,” Bellamy exclaims. “Like, every time I go to reset it, it’ll be fine for maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Sometimes longer. It varies. But then, out of nowhere, it will just _stop_ all over again.”

“Maybe someone else is using your router,” Octavia says with a slightly amused curve of her lips, and Bellamy glares at her.

“I put a password on it, like I told you.”

“Yeah, well, we are in the twenty-first century, Bell. People have ways around that. Besides, did you make it something difficult?”

He turns back to the sauce. “I mean, I _think_ so. Plus, I don’t talk to a damn person in this place. Ninety percent of them are ancient, and then there’s the stoners a floor down who don’t pay attention to anything, and then that blonde girl across the hall who I’ve seen like once in the entire time she’s lived here.”

Octavia perks up at that, cocking her head to the side and asking, “Blonde girl?”

“Yeah, she’s really short, about your height - ” Octavia flicks him off at that. “And I think she must be in med school or something because she carries these textbooks around that probably weigh more than me. Plus she’s always coming back at weird hours.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s cause she interns at the hospital.”

Bellamy spins around, his jaw slack. “You _know_ her?”

Octavia shrugs, mischief lighting up her eyes but her expression built entirely of innocence. “Yeah. We were a year apart in school at Ark. She’s the one who set me up with Lincoln, because they’d taken a few art classes together. Her name’s Clarke Griffin.”

Bellamy leans back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest and quirking an eyebrow at his sister. “Does she know who _I_ am?”

“How should I know, Bell?” she asks lightly. She hops down from the stool and grabs a fork to test the noodles. “Dinner’s done. You ready?”

They don’t discuss Clarke Griffin again the rest of the evening.

But it’s never really out of Bellamy’s head, the fact that the girl across the hall has somehow infiltrated his sister’s life in such a serious way. She and Lincoln have been dating since... _God_ , since forever, it feels like. And what kind of coincidence is that, that this girl winds up across the hall from him in this shitty apartment complex that is only inhabited by old people because it’s so far removed from the actual bustle of the city?

(It was also way, _way_ cheaper for that reason, which is why Bellamy had nabbed it so quickly.)

And so he makes a conscious effort to pay more attention to this girl across the hall, to figure out her deal. She’s pretty, in a completely _objective_ , _not-creepy_ way, her blonde hair long and curling at the ends when she leaves it down, but it’s usually tied up in a messy bun with a few loose tendrils falling around the nape of her neck. She always wears light blue scrubs, and it’s how he realizes how goddamn pretty her eyes are: vibrantly blue, the kind of blue that reminds him of the Aegean Sea (he _really_ likes Greece, alright?).

He starts interrogating Octavia, too: “Do you still talk to her? Are you guys _friends_? Are her and Lincoln friends? Do you - ”

“Bellamy Blake, I will murder you in your sleep tonight if you don’t shut the fuck up. If you’re this obsessed, why don’t you just go over there and _talk_ to her?”

And with that absurd suggestion, Bellamy dropped the topic.

(And, in retrospect: he never would have unearthed the issue if he hadn’t been paying more attention. So, like - less creepy, more productive.)

Because by noticing when she came home, and when she was out - by realizing that their schedules coincided fairly regularly, oddly enough, between Bellamy helping out at the university and Clarke clearly heavily involved in the hospital, they were both almost always awake at the insane hours of the morning - he realized that her absence fit perfectly with the time window that his WiFi started working again.

He tests this theory for a week, and, damn it all to hell - the blonde girl (Clarke, he reminds himself, _Clarke_ ) has been stealing his fucking WiFi.

And in his sleep-deprived, anger-fueled state, he grabs his wireless router wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and storms over to Clarke Griffin’s door at three eighteen in the morning.

And that’s how Clarke finds him, her eyes heavy with the nearness of sleep and her hair a tumultuous storm about her head, her scrubs now removed for a loose tank top and shorts that are way too short to be conceivably comfortable, but Bellamy is too flustered to even focus on her appearance right now.

“Have you been using my WiFi?” he demands curtly.

“W- _what_?” Clarke breathes, rubbing her eyes as though she’s not even sure this is reality.

“Have you been using my WiFi?” he repeats. He’s fixing her with his best glare, the one that had made even Lincoln grimace when they’d first met, but this girl - this tiny, exhausted girl - merely leans against the doorframe and crosses her arms over her chest.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning. Can’t we discuss this - ”

“No, we can’t, because I have a fucking thesis to write which I can’t do if you keep _stealing my WiFi_.”

“You know, you aren’t the only one is the complex who needs WiFi.”

“Yeah, well, I _paid_ for this shit, and therefore - ”

“Also, it’s not _my_ damn fault you made your password so easy to guess.”

“It was _not_ \- ”

“ _Octavia_ , Bellamy? _Really_?” Bellamy sputters then, finally getting a look at her - at the curls of her blonde tresses, at the smudges beneath her eyes from lack of sleep, at the way her eyes are lit up like the blueness of flame, at her very, _very_ low-cut shirt that he is trying his best to ignore. He takes all of her in, and, yeah, he knew she was pretty - _objectively_ \- but holy shit. Holy _shit_.

(He knows he is fucked from the moment he finally stops looking at her, and finally _sees_ her.)

“How - how did you - ”

“You know how I know. Your sister and I were friends in college. We keep in touch still, sometimes. And I see Lincoln all the time, when he gets injured and winds up in the ER.” She laughs a little bit, and Bellamy wishes she wouldn’t, because it’s seeping into his bloodstream, it’s ratcheting up his heart rate at a terrifying speed. “It’s good practice for an intern, and he’s more than happy to oblige.”

Bellamy is staring at her, open-mouthed, and Clarke shifts uncomfortably and clears her throat. “Look... it was a dick move, and I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to buy my own router for months now, but I haven’t saved up enough yet between med school and the internship and - and my mother and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, so.” She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “I’ll pay you back, if you want? You pick a number. Obviously I’ve been using it since you got it, but... you can...”

Bellamy smiles at her - a full-blown, wide-toothed grin - and maybe he should feel awkward about the fact that just ten minutes ago he was yelling at her, and maybe he should feel awkward about the fact that he is mostly naked and clutching a WiFi router to his chest at her doorstep at an ungodly hour, but he doesn’t. Bellamy smiles at her, and he says, “What about dinner, instead?”

Clarke ducks her head and bites her lip. “You really want to go on a date with a WiFi thief?”

Bellamy shrugs and smirks down at her. “Is that a yes?” Clarke looks at him, blue eyes meeting brown, and he sees the flicker of confusion and intrigue and hope there, and it makes him grin.

“Yeah,” she mutters. “Yeah, alright.”

(Six months later, they’re just sharing one apartment.)

(Octavia laughs at him for a week.)


End file.
